Lucapa’s mine in Lesotho continues to yield special diamonds

Australia’s Lucapa Diamond (ASX:LOM) announced Monday the recovery of yet another special diamond from its 70 per cent-owned Mothae diamond mine in Lesotho.

The 11.88-carat diamond was recovered from the North zone and, according to Lucapa, it is the first of its kind recovered from that section of the Mothae kimberlite pipe.

In a press release, the miner said that this recovery means that special diamonds can be found in all of the zones sampled at Mothae, the largest one being an 89-carat gem recovered in May from the South-East zone.

“To have already recovered Special sized diamonds from early sampling tonnages in all three of these areas (…) adds to our excitement as we advance construction of our new 150 tph plant, which remains on track for commercial diamond production later this year,” Lucapa Managing Director Stephen Wetherall said in the media statement.

The Mothae kimberlite pipe is located within 5 kilometres of Gem Diamonds’ (LON:GEMD) Letšeng mine, the highest $ per carat kimberlite diamond mine in the world.

In Wetherall’s view, the results from Mothae complement the high-value production from the Lulo mine in Angola, whose output was of 5,058 carats in the second quarter of 2018.